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13 HR Skills for the Future
13 HR Skills for the Future
Image based on BCG’s Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce report
And according to our AIHR competency research, only 41% of HR professionals are able to
improve efficiency and drive business value through skilled use of technology and data.
What’s more, about 40% of work-related skills will change by 2025, and 85% of organizations
have picked up the pace of their digitization since the start of the pandemic. It is clear that a lot
(more) is already expected of HR compared to a few years ago.
Because of the accelerated needs of the business, as well as HR’s central role in upskilling the
workforce and supporting the business through these changes, HR needs to change first. And
this means that HR professionals need to upskill in order to drive that change.
Changes such as digitalizing and automating administrative processes, creating new HR
operating models, and boosting employee experience, for instance. With the right skills, you can
be the key to advancing your organization to a new era of work, tackle workforce issues with
confidence, and become your best HR self.
So what are the skills that will help you do that?
Let’s dive in.
1. Change management and change consulting
Organizational change has become a constant in companies today. If this wasn’t already the
case before Covid, then it certainly is now. Org change comes in many different shapes and
sizes:
• Subscribe to the Change Management Blog and start reading right away
• Read our articles HR and Change Management and HR’s Guide to Digital Change
Management
• Follow a course on Change Management for HR with HCI and learn how to navigate
culture change with AIHR
Please note that we have not tried this course and other courses mentioned in this article
ourselves, with the exception of AIHR’s courses.
2. Risk management
Risk management for HR is about analyzing the risks that a complex workforce might pose to
the business. This then enables HR professionals to prevent issues or resolve them quickly if
they do arise.
Now, what is a complex workforce? Pretty much any workforce in today’s world of work
comprising a combination of ‘traditional’ employees, contractors, temps, and other contingent
workers who may or may not be working remotely across multiple locations with different laws
and regulations.
Risk management also comes with scenario planning in a form of regular multidisciplinary
workshops in which HR is actively involved. Various scenarios are being run to prepare for what
the future holds. For example, what if half of our workforce becomes unable to work due to
another pandemic? Or what if our frontline workers can’t come to work anymore because of a
global energy crisis?
“I haven’t met many HR functions which are running scenario planning. And the reason I’ve
been given, which I think is a ridiculous reason, is that people don’t want to be scared,” says
Naomi Stanford, Organization Design author & consultant. However, scenario planning is very
helpful for future-proofing your workforce and your organization.
Future relevance
According to a survey by Deloitte, identifying and managing new risks is a priority for 61% of
organizations in terms of risk management.
As such, we’re seeing a shift when it comes to HR’s involvement in risk management. Where
(before Covid) organizations would often ask their HR people ‘What has happened and how did
we react to it?’ they are now increasingly asking them ‘What do you think is going to happen
and how can we prepare for that?’
In other words, HR’s involvement was previously more from a compliance point of view and is
now moving towards a planning ahead kind of role; hence the relevance of this skill for future-
looking HR professionals.
How to develop risk management skills
What you can do right now:
• Download an HR audit template to start identifying key risk areas of your people
processes
• Find peers with experience in risk management and have a (virtual) coffee with them
to hear about their experience
• Team up with a department in your organization that is experienced in risk
management, or a dedicated risk manager, to organize a workshop on the basics of
risk management for your HR team
• If you’re part of an HR community, drop the question in there (and if you aren’t part
of an HR community yet, join one!)
3. People analytics
No, not every HR professional needs to become a people analytics specialist. A certain
understanding, however, of the value data can bring to the organization and the ability to
demonstrate this are important. So is the ability to use the insights gained from this data to
make data-driven decisions.
This is the essence of evidence-based HR, the practice of making decisions supported by data
to help ensure that you can reach the desired business outcomes.
Future relevance
As more and more organizations become data-driven, so do HR departments. In a recent
report, BCG puts it this way:
“People Analytics is becoming more and more integral to HR professionals, as better data are
available inside and outside the company on current and prospective employees, skill levels,
career paths, and the results of new ways of working. Thus, data skills are increasingly
requested across many HR roles.”
BCG also reports that companies see the growing importance of these topics and that they are
actively looking for HR colleagues who possess people analytics skills, among others.
Companies are increasingly investing in HR Analytics tools – the market is likely to grow from
$2.8 to $9 billion within the next ten years.
Examples of emerging data skills in HR mentioned in the BCG report are Microsoft Power BI,
Tableau, and KPIs.
How to develop people analytics skills
What you can do right now:
4. Stakeholder management
As HR is moving more and more from an administrative to a strategic role, stakeholder
management is gaining importance in creating effective people strategies. Stakeholder
management refers to building and maintaining relationships with people involved in or affected
by your work activities.
HR professionals need to balance the interests of various stakeholders: different types of
employees, managers, senior leadership, but also the wider society.
Future relevance
To successfully navigate work relationships and create impact, HR must build solid stakeholder
management skills. These include stakeholder mapping and stakeholder engagement and
communication. In short, relationship building with the stakeholders requires both empathy and
the ability to deal with conflict.
Something else worth mentioning when it comes to stakeholder management is the ability of
HR to influence both up and down the organizational ladder.
“If you don’t have that ability to influence and to communicate, to make a compelling argument
and back it up and stand by it firmly, it’s going to be really hard,” observes Lars Schmidt,
founder of Amplify and Redefining HR Accelerator, and author of the best-selling book,
Redefining HR.
How to develop stakeholder management skills
What you can do right now:
• Download our Stakeholder Management for HR Playbook
• Check out this Quick and Dirty Guide to Stakeholder Mapping
• Read this short article with 6 tips on Stakeholder Management for HR
•
5. Management of strategic deals and alliances
The management of strategic deals and alliances refers to partnerships, joint ventures, and
mergers & acquisitions, among other things.
An example of a strategic alliance/partnership is the one between Spotify and Uber. Both
companies joined forces to improve the customer experience by offering personalized music to
Uber riders.
In all of these types of, often cross-border, collaboration, HR has a significant role to play. Take
a situation in which two companies merge, for example. There will be a different way of
working and culture in each organization. Not to mention the way each company
approaches performance management, learning and development, compensation and benefits,
etc.
The biggest risk – and therefore, a task for HR – perhaps lies in employee turnover. Studies
show that approximately 50-75% of key managers leave voluntarily within two or three years
after a company has been acquired.
Aligning culture and HR processes such as the ones just mentioned takes time. It requires
managing different types of collaboration in and outside the organization in order to implement
and/or adjust existing HR practices.
HR is one of the most disrupted industries in terms of skills.– BCG
Future relevance
The number of mergers and acquisitions has increased significantly. Over 63 thousand
transactions took place globally in 2021 compared to just over 50 thousand in the year before.
According to McKinsey, the M&A outlook is getting more complicated. This is due to, among
other things, uncertainty about the geopolitical situation, rising inflation, and more regulatory
scrutiny.
However, as pointed out in the McKinsey article, even if we would see fewer mergers and
acquisitions going forward, companies are then likely to move towards more strategic
partnerships, joint ventures, and alliances instead.
In other words, being able to manage strategic deals remains an important skill to have in your
future-proof HR toolkit.
How to develop strategic deal management skills
What you can do right now:
• Check out the 7 Guiding Principles for Data Ethics in HR (and download the guide)
• Read our article People Analytics: Ethical Considerations
• Discuss ethics and data privacy matters with peers who already have experience with
this
•
8. Critical and systems thinking
Let’s start with a brief definition of each term: “Critical Thinking involves examining and
challenging thoughts or ideas, while Systems Thinking focuses on examining the effects of
actions or ideas on a system.”
Critical thinking is applied to, for example, interviewing new job applicants without bias and
assessing large quantities of data to draw logical conclusions. Systems thinking helps HR see
how different aspects of their function and their organization interact with and influence each
other.
Both types of thinking can help HR professionals with problem-solving and enable them to deal
with complexity. As such, they can become more flexible in their way of thinking, which allows
them to find new solutions, make informed decisions, and be more effective.
Future relevance
As we saw earlier, HR is becoming increasingly strategic. In strategic conversations (with
internal business partners), critical thinking is central to the HR professional’s role.
There’s another reason why critical and systems thinking are indispensable for future-proof
People teams. In today’s world, there is a lot of information available that HR professionals
need to:
• Read this short blog post with 5 tips for systems thinking for HR
• Watch this 4-minute video with 5 tips to improve your critical thinking
• Take an online introduction course to critical thinking
• Subscribe to the Systems Thinker and read their Introduction to Systems Thinking
9. Negotiation skills
Another essential set of skills related to navigating relationships at work is negotiation skills.
Disagreements are common in the workplace, whether they’re about processes, solutions, or
goals. What’s more, the interests of the organization are not always 100% aligned with those of
the workforce or job candidates.
HR professionals must be able to communicate effectively to achieve a result acceptable for all
parties involved.
Future relevance
With the growing number of strategic partnerships, alliances, and joint ventures, and the
importance of stakeholder management, the ability to negotiate at work will continue to
increase.
When asked about their preferred capabilities for their people, CEOs, MDs, and Sales
Directors have identified negotiation skills as their top preference.
Negotiation and persuasion skills are also important in recruitment – and will remain so in the
future – since they are unlikely to be automated, and the added value of the ‘human touch’
here is high.
How to develop negotiation skills
What you can do right now:
• Self-awareness
• Act
• Forgive
• Educate
She held a heartfelt TED talk about being SAFE, which you can watch here, and also
discussed why HR needs more support in the All About HR podcast.
In short, if HR professionals don’t take care of themselves first, they won’t be able to take care
of the people in the rest of the organization.
How to develop resilience
What you can do right now:
Future relevance
Apart from specific HR projects, People teams are also becoming increasingly involved in
strategic, organization-wide projects that could, for instance, impact how employees work.
For these projects to be successful, it’s important that HR professionals are able to scope the
project realistically, divide tasks and oversee the execution, and implement learnings in their
next project.
Human Resources professionals also need to have the skills to continuously improve and refine
workflows and processes and eliminate redundancies within them. This continued iteration of
HR processes is a different kind of project management and the key to long-term
success. That’s where agile HR and lean HR project management approaches come into play.
How to develop project management skills
What you can do right now: